Which exam should I buy?

[pb7192]

So I finished all my kaplan tests and I want to save my AAMC full length till a week before the test (8/23). I was wondering which test I should buy? I heard about EK, but does any one know which one is the most representative? Or if another test company is better?

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[El-Rami]

I hear good things about EK. NS may also be worth it too. I would buy as many EK as you can do, to be honest.

 

[GrapesofRath]

In my personal preferential order

1) Anything AAMC related. Both new exam material and old exam material(particularly AAMC 7-11) apply here. Any AAMC material is the best CARs practice you'll get period and alot of their Bio passages are still very applicable and great practice.
2) EK FL's: These were really well done.
3) BR FL's: The old ones got very good reviews and from what I've seen of the new ones they are quite good as well. The CARS is pretty bad, but you know that going in with BR. The psych/soc is meh but the science practice is so good it's worth doing and spending alot of time on.
4) Next Step: There psych/soc is good in particular. Very solid in general. I just an always going to be somewhat wary of recommending NS given some of the blatant issues they have(ie they have been caught blatantly copying a passage from the AAMC and putting it in their practice test).

All in all, all of these are worth doing. If you do all the AAMC stuff and say exams 7-11 as well(which I think are good practice and do all the verbals from all the exams from 3-9 R to 10 and 11), the EK, BR and NS FL's, you'll give yourself over a dozen FL's to work through. Not bad at all and the AAMC is releasing another FL in the fall which will be very clutch.

Additional practice can be found if you need it through Khan Academy passages( all in all there are over 200 of them), BR passages(there probably over 200 of them across all their science books), TPRH hyperlearning and supplement books(the verbal has about 100 passages through this and science around 200 passages), EK 101 verbal passages and some EK books as well( the CARS book had 20 or so very good passages, same with psych and bio). Add it all up and you probably have over 1000 passages to work with here from all of this and all of it is reasonably good prep for the actual MCAT.

 

[DesitnationMD]

IMO and from what I've read on sdn and reddit, EK and NS have the best (i.e. most aamc like) stand-alone, easy to get full lengths. EKs are $50/per and are consistently good (weaker on CARS for me) while NS exams are $30/per and get better (weaker on bio foundation for me) as you go 1-5. They both have plenty of experimental, data based critical thinking passages and questions like the new exam (both captured the tone/style of my June exam well, and were tougher than the real exam on average so I walked in over prepared and it showed.

Both are a bit calculation heavy compared to the AAMC exam material but they are both waaaaayyy better than Kaplan and TPR. BR old exams were not good at all, and now their new exams are just not worth it (antiquated system, limited access, and only the science section is passable, but not as good as EK).

As of 8/1 (last I checked) only Nextstep and TPR have the proper 1Q at a time format of the new MCAT. NS and Kaplan explanations were the most helpful. They were very thorough with multiple paths to answer given whenever applicable. EK behind them, TPR next and BR last. I never saw any gold standard exams but their old MCAT material was just not good at all so I who knows if they got better.

Don't just take full length exams tho. Go through the AAMC materials between your exams, along with doing homework. Khan is another decent resource that I would rate as good due to the price (FREE!!).

Finally, no matter who you use, IGNORE SCALED SCORES! The companies all pull this out of their a%^. Focus on your % correct (70%+ on EK, NS and AAMC PT have been good signs of success).

 

[pb7192]

Thanks ill do as many EK ones!

 

[nolookpass]

In my personal preferential order

1) Anything AAMC related. Both new exam material and old exam material(particularly AAMC 7-11) apply here. Any AAMC material is the best CARs practice you'll get period and alot of their Bio passages are still very applicable and great practice.
2) EK FL's: These were really well done.
3) BR FL's: The old ones got very good reviews and from what I've seen of the new ones they are quite good as well. The CARS is pretty bad, but you know that going in with BR. The psych/soc is meh but the science practice is so good it's worth doing and spending alot of time on.
4) Next Step: There psych/soc is good in particular. Very solid in general. I just an always going to be somewhat wary of recommending NS given some of the blatant issues they have(ie they have been caught blatantly copying a passage from the AAMC and putting it in their practice test).

All in all, all of these are worth doing. If you do all the AAMC stuff and say exams 7-11 as well(which I think are good practice and do all the verbals from all the exams from 3-9 R to 10 and 11), the EK, BR and NS FL's, you'll give yourself over a dozen FL's to work through. Not bad at all and the AAMC is releasing another FL in the fall which will be very clutch.

Additional practice can be found if you need it through Khan Academy passages( all in all there are over 200 of them), BR passages(there probably over 200 of them across all their science books), TPRH hyperlearning and supplement books(the verbal has about 100 passages through this and science around 200 passages), EK 101 verbal passages and some EK books as well( the CARS book had 20 or so very good passages, same with psych and bio). Add it all up and you probably have over 1000 passages to work with here from all of this and all of it is reasonably good prep for the actual MCAT.

Aren't the new question packs copies of the old AAMC exams? Are there new questions in the packs?

 

[GrapesofRath]

Aren't the new question packs copies of the old AAMC exams? Are there new questions in the packs?

There based off old exams. I'm not sure if they are based off what was released in AAMC 3-11(my guess is that some is from AAMC 6 and some isn't and is hence new).

 

[nolookpass]

There based off old exams. I'm not sure if they are based off what was released in AAMC 3-11(my guess is that some is from AAMC 6 and some isn't and is hence new).

Thanks. You say the CARS and Biology is still applicable. Is the C/P not still applicable from these old exams?